Abstract
Shakespeare and Austen have striking female comic characters in common: resourceful, frequently insightful, sharp of tongue and mind. For instance, Much Ado’s Beatrice and Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennet have provoked inquiry into the degree to which each author critiques (or not) the gender politics of their respective moments. In spite of the heroines’ strength, they frequently must undergo a kind of chastening process, so that whatever romantic happiness is achieved must be preceded by repentance and renunciation. Yet, both authors have been readily assimilated to a secular, or sceptical, vision of religious identity. This essay proposes a religious origin prototype for the winning intellectual heroine, sourcing her to the martyrological writings of Anne Askew, John Bale and John Foxe. After examining the writings of Anne Askew, this chapter analyses Shakespeare’s and Austen’s Protestant heroines—in particular, Fanny Price. The chapter suggests that Shakespeare and Austen adapted these figures from martyrology in their writings, complicating merely ‘stock’ notions of character function so as to render nuanced representations of interiority.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Anna Murphy Jameson, Characteristics of Women Moral Poetical and Historical (London, 1832). Edited by Cheri L. Larsen Hoeckly (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2005), 62.
- 2.
Pride and Prejudice. Edited by R. W. Chapman (Oxford: Oxford University Press) vol. II, 1923, 52: all further Austen references to this edition; Much Ado About Nothing (2.1.313–15), in the Complete Oxford Shakespeare, eds. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986): all further Shakespeare references to this edition. Michael Giffin terms this ‘a balance between the life of the mind (reason) and the life of the heart (feeling), usually with reason bringing feeling under a kind of necessary control’, in Jane Austen and Religion: Salvation and Society in Georgian England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 140.
- 3.
Stanley Cavell has argued for the persistence of this tradition in the Hollywood heroine of the 1930s and 1940s. See his Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).
- 4.
For example, Stanley Cavell’s Disowning Knowledge in Six Plays of Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Millicent Bell, Shakespeare’s Tragic Skepticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); John D. Cox, Seeming Knowledge: Shakespeare and Skeptical Faith (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007); Graham Bradshaw, Shakespeare’s Scepticism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Suzanne M. Tartamella, Rethinking Shakespeare’s Skepticism: The Aesthetics of Doubt in the Sonnets and Plays (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2014); Angus Wilson, ‘The Neighborhood of Timbuctoo: Conflicts in Jane Austen’s Novels’, and Gilbert Ryle, ‘Jane Austen and the Moralists’, both in Critical Essays on Jane Austen, ed. B. C. Southam (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969).
- 5.
Jameson’s study, for instance, goes about celebrating the uniqueness of Shakespeare’s women by constructing a taxonomy of different types: ‘characters of intellect’ and ‘characters of passion and imagination’.
- 6.
See, for example, Stephen Orgel, Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); and Lisa Jardine, Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).
- 7.
Shakespeare and the Nature of Women, 1st edn. 1975 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
- 8.
See William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism [S.l.]: [s.n.], 1957.
- 9.
John Knott, Discourses of Martyrdom in English Literature, 1563–1694 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 2. Six Elizabethan editions were followed by multiple later ones. On the text’s afterlife, see Eirwen Nicholson, ‘Eighteenth-Century Foxe: Evidence for the Impact of the Acts and Monuments in the Long Eighteenth Century’, in John Foxe and The English Reformation, ed. D. Loades (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 1997); on Sunday school, see Patricia Anderson’s The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture 1790–1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 29, 33–5, 90.
- 10.
Susannah Brietz Monta, ‘Foxe’s Female Martyrs and the Sanctity of Transgression’, Renaissance and Reformation XXV. 1 (2001): 3–22.
- 11.
Knott, Discourses of Martyrdom, 2.
- 12.
On this point, in relation to Askew in particular, see Megan Matchinske, Writing Gender and the State in Early Modern England (Cambridge: University Press, 1998).
- 13.
See, for instance, Claire McEachern ‘“A Whore at the First Blush Seemeth Only a Woman”: John Bale’s Image of Both Churches and the Terms of Religious Difference in the Early English Reformation’, The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 25(2) 1995: 245–69.
- 14.
John Bale, ‘The Examinations of Anne Askew’. In the Select Works of John Bale, D.D. Parker Society (Cambridge, 1849), 138.
- 15.
See Paula McQuade, ‘Except They had Offended the Law: Gender and Jurisprudence in the Examinations of Anne Askew’, in Literature and History (Autumn, 1994): 1–14; and Tarey Samra Grabon, ‘Feminine Irony and the Art of Linguistic Cooperation in Anne Askew’s Sixteenth-Century Examinacyons’, Rhetorica 25 (2007): 385–41.
- 16.
Ellen Macek, ‘The Emergence of a Feminine Spirituality in the Book of Martyrs’, Sixteenth-Century Journal 19 (1988): 63–80.
- 17.
See Susannah Brietz Monta, Martyrdom and Literature in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); and David K. Anderson, Martyrs and Players in Early Modern England: Tragedy, Religion and Violence on Stage (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014).
- 18.
Carole Levin, ‘The Taming of the Queen: Foxe’s Katherine and Shakespeare’s Kate’, in ‘High and Mighty Queens’ of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations, ed. Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney, and Debra Barrett-Graces (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 171–86.
- 19.
Nicholson, ‘Eighteenth-Century Foxe’.
- 20.
See David Loades, ‘Afterword: John Foxe in the Twenty-First Century’, in John Foxe and his World, ed. Christopher Highly and John N. King (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2002), 277–89; 285.
- 21.
Laura Mooneyham White, Jane Austen’s Anglicanism (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2011), 5.
- 22.
Giffin, Jane Austen and Religion, 126.
- 23.
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (edited by R. W. Chapman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934), 112.
- 24.
Clara Calvo, ‘Rewriting Lear’s untender daughter: Fanny Price as a Regency Cordelia in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park’, Shakespeare Survey 58 (2005): 83–9.
- 25.
Including the nonsense: witness her laughing at Tom Bertram’s nearly being caught out in his speculations on Mrs Grant’s desire for a lover (chapter 12).
Bibliography
Anderson, David K. Martyrs and Players in Early Modern England: Tragedy, Religion and Violence on Stage. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2014.
Anderson, Patricia. The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture 1790–1860. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. Edited by R. W. Chapman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934.
———. Pride and Prejudice. Edited by R. W. Chapman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923.
Bale, John. ‘The Examinations of Anne Askew’. In the Select Works of John Bale, D.D. Parker Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849, 137-239.
Bell, Millicent. Shakespeare’s Tragic Skepticism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
Bradshaw, Graham. Shakespeare’s Scepticism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.
Calvo, Clara. ‘Rewriting Lear’s Untender Daughter: Fanny Price as a Regency Cordelia in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park’. Shakespeare Survey 58 (2005): 83–9.
Cavell, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.
———. Disowning Knowledge in Six Plays of Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Cox, John D. Seeming Knowledge: Shakespeare and Skeptical Faith. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007.
Dusinberre, Juliet. Shakespeare and the Nature of Women, first edition 1975. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Foxe, John. The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe. London, 1583.
Giffin, Michael. Jane Austen and Religion: Salvation and Society in Georgian England. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Grabon, Tarey Samra. ‘Feminine Irony and the Art of Linguistic Cooperation in Anne Askew’s Sixteenth-Century Examinacyons’. Rhetorica 25 (2007): 385–41.
Haller, William. The Rise of Puritanism [S.l.]: [s.n.], 1957.
Jameson, Anna Murphy. Characteristics of Women Moral Poetical and Historical (London, 1832). Edited by Cheri L. Larsen Hoeckly. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2005.
Jardine, Lisa. Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare. Brighton: Harvester, 1983.
Knott, John. Discourses of Martyrdom in English Literature, 1563–1694. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Levin, Carole. ‘The Taming of the Queen: Foxe’s Katherine and Shakespeare’s Kate’. In ‘High and Mighty Queens’ of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations. Edited by Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney, and Debra Barrett-Graces. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, 171–86.
Loades, David. ‘Afterword: John Foxe in the Twenty-First Century’. In John Foxe and his World. Edited by Christopher Highly and John N. King. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2002, 277–290.
Macek, Ellen. ‘The Emergence of a Feminine Spirituality in the Book of Martyrs’. Sixteenth-Century Journal 19 (1988): 63–80.
Matchinske, Megan. Writing Gender and the State in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
McEachern, Claire. ‘“A Whore at the First Blush Seemeth Only a Woman”: John Bale’s Image of Both Churches and the Terms of Religious Difference in the Early English Reformation’. The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 25.2 (1995): 245–69.
McQuade, Paula. ‘Except They had Offended the Law: Gender and Jurisprudence in the Examinations of Anne Askew’. Literature and History 3.2 (1994): 1–14.
Monta, Susannah Brietz. ‘Foxe’s Female Martyrs and the Sanctity of Transgression’. Renaissance and Reformation 25.1 (2001): 3–22.
———. Martyrdom and Literature in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Nicholson, Eirwen. ‘Eighteenth-Century Foxe: Evidence for the Impact of the Acts and Monuments in the Long Eighteenth Century’. In John Foxe and The English Reformation. Edited by D. Loades. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 1997, 143–177.
Orgel, Stephen. Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Ryle, Gilbert. ‘Jane Austen and the Moralists’. In Critical Essays on Jane Austen. Edited by B. C. Southam. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969, 5–18.
Shakespeare, William. The Complete Oxford Shakespeare. Edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Tartamella, Suzanne M. Rethinking Shakespeare’s Skepticism: The Aesthetics of Doubt in the Sonnets and Plays. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2014.
Wilson, Angus. ‘The Neighborhood of Timbuctoo: Conflicts in Jane Austen’s Novels’. In Critical Essays on Jane Austen Edited by B. C. Southam. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969, 182–200.
White, Laura Mooneyham. Jane Austen’s Anglicanism. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2011.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McEachern, C. (2019). ‘As sure as I have a thought or a soul’: The Protestant Heroine in Shakespeare and Austen. In: Cano, M., García-Periago, R. (eds) Jane Austen and William Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25689-0_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25689-0_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-25688-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-25689-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)